Transcript: Start a Niche Site? Listener Question – DS587

Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. Today I’m gonna answer a question from an audience member, and it was a little bit interesting how this one came in and it’s roughly, the question largely is, Hey, should I start a niche site? What advice can you give me? And that kind of opened my eyes, uh, in, in a couple ways.

I mean, I kind of knew the problem was there, but. There’s a lot of old content on my website, niche Site project, and then there’s a lot of old content on YouTube. Thousands of videos and things that were uh, applicable back in the day are not anymore. I started the blog in 2013, so there’s a lot of stuff out there and you know, I’m not going back and.

Uh, updating old content. There was a time where I was trying to do that, but things have changed. So kind of a two-parter on this episode. One I’ll directly answer the questions from, I’ll, I’ll give the initials of the person fb. I’ll give a little bit of the background because when I first got the question, I was defensive, right?

Some, sometimes. I’m more defensive than I should be. And I was defensive and I was like, what the fuck? Like, what are you even talking about? I don’t owe you anything. And, and then I’m, after I read the email, I’m like, all right, what are you, what are you talking about? And I’ll, I’ll explain, and I’m eventually answering the question here, so it’s legit.

Um, or it worked and I, I. I realized what the person was asking and the misunderstanding. ’cause a lot of times things are a misunderstanding. The internet is a fucked up place. So it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit hard to understand someone’s, uh, true intentions. And it may come off wrong. Maybe they have a bad day.

Maybe I’m having a bad day. I didn’t sleep enough last night or whatever. Although last night I actually slept pretty well. So little bit of housekeeping, number one. I’m not recording outside. I’m, I’m downstairs in the studio and I have not yet recorded the musical intro and outro, but I will later and I’ll play an electric guitar in this case, uh, in which now I’m realizing you would’ve heard the intro already.

But at this point in time, I have not yet recorded it. So, one thing I’d like to do is ask if you have any questions out there in the audience. If you have topics that you would like for me to cover, let me know. Feedback at Doug show, you can leave a comment over on the YouTube side. I have seen some positive comments on number one, recording outside and just doing a different style.

It’s, uh, slightly more work, but it’s not. , Catastrophic, right? So it’s just I have to record on a different camera. I have to move the SD card and a couple other things where when I record down here, the audio is really good and

since it’s on the hard drive, it’s very easy to upload and edit and all that kind of stuff. It ends up taking an extra 45 minutes to do like camera set up, moving the files, little things like that, which is a. F fairly significant deterrent. Um, I mean, that roughly doubles the time where down here I just hit record, go and move forward.

But anyway, I’m, I’m doing this, uh, voluntarily, so I’m choosing to do it and that, that makes a big difference. Okay, so few. Few things here. Uh, I guess the other part of the show, just before I, I start answering FBS questions here, other part of the show. I had some idea earlier. I’m gonna record it later. I only have a certain amount of time right now and I have a, a good amount of energy.

Well caffeinated and that sort of thing. So there will be a part two and well, you’ll know what it is when we get to it. It’ll be very interesting and riveting and you’re gonna love it. The other piece of feedback that I got, not only recording outside and people are at least not complaining about music.

There are people that are saying, Hey, keep doing the music. We dig it. And I like that feedback for the people that get it. It’s for you, for the people that don’t. It’s not for you. Uh, I can’t remember how many. How many times I’ve heard that in the past and many people have said it, but that works. So I’ve heard good feedback on the project management ideas and it just happened to be, uh, coincidence.

A couple episodes where I was thinking about project management ideas and how I have applied. Those skills or experiences to normal everyday life that people run into and how it might be useful. So if you have any specific topics around project management or really. Uh, executing and finishing projects or just living your life, there’s a lot of things that you could possibly relate.

I mean, you can wedge an idea into almost anything if you try hard enough, and that’s what I’ve been doing with project management, which is a, a vast, um, you know, amount of knowledge and applications of many different areas. It could be finance, could be scheduling, could be, um, you know, working with other people and negotiate.

I mean, there’s so many pieces. So if you have a specific interest, maybe related to websites or agency work or entrepreneurship, self-employment, that sort of thing. So many little aspects do come in. Let’s get to the question here. So the, the. The initial email came in, um, can you check out the Google form for my question?

And I thought, well, I have a Google form and it’s attached to a hire me page. Um, I also saw this person, I think they commented on a recent video and they said, I sent you an email in the Google form and you haven’t answered it. And they seemed kind of pissed off, and that’s why I was a little defensive.

I was just like. You’re a random person on the internet and you didn’t pay me any money and I don’t owe you fucking anything. So if you have a question, there’s like a million ways to get in touch with me Somehow you found one that is inactive and I’m not sure what’s going on, but I was like, Hey, I didn’t get the email.

I was, that’s what I thought. Okay, so that’s what I thought. I replied back. Oh, I didn’t get the email. Go ahead and email me again. I must have missed it. Let me know the subject line, gimme some details. So I thought all those mean defensive and dark thoughts, but what I said was, oh, I’m sorry. Why don’t you send me more information?

I didn’t see it. So customer service 1 0 1, you know, don’t be a dick. Uh, there’s probably some misunderstanding, but in my head, that’s what was going on. That’s the quiet part, out loud kind of thing. So, uh, they did follow up. A few days later they said, I submitted a set of questions through the Google form in the contact section of your website using a specific email.

At first, I thought that would be sent via email, but later I realized it’s intended for live event related inquiries. If you’re able to find my submission, can you take a look at the questions and respond to me here? And I jogged my memory, and then I remembered back in the day, I, I mean, I did live streams, um, two times a week for a pretty long time.

And I thought, oh, yeah, at one point I said, submit your questions on a Google form, and that’ll make it easier for me to see the question who it’s from and kind of sort through it, know if I answered the question, that sort of thing. I totally forgot about it. It was eight, probably eight, nine years ago, something like that.

I mean, this is when we lived in Bozeman and, and I’m imagining like doing those live streams in, in that house, in that specific, um, office slash guest bedroom. So anyway, I was like, oh. Okay. I replied back and said I didn’t get the submission. What are the questions? Did you submit it on the Hire Me page?

That’s not for live events, just to hire. Thanks. I’m brief in emails, by the way, short. You don’t need a whole preamble thing. That’s what podcast and YouTube for. I can ramble here. Emails short. I’m a, I’m a very slow typer, so FB wrote a longer email. Four questions should be fairly quick to answer, although.

I’ve been stretching stuff out, so we’ll see how it goes. FB says this, I’m a content marketer on social media and I earn from marketing Amazon deals, and I’m looking to expand into blogging and affiliate marketing primarily through the Amazon Associates program. I’ve done some initial research and asked GPT about successful niche sites, which led me to your blog and YouTube channel.

After going through your content, it’s clear that you have extensive experience in this field, and I’d love to get your insight. I have a few questions if you don’t mind. Number one, are you still earning from your niche sites and do you believe there’s still a good opportunity to start one today? If so, how would you recommend I begin and what kind of investment should I plan for?

Two. I noticed some of the templates and resources on your website aren’t downloadable. Am I missing something or is access limited? Number three, what tools or platforms would you suggest for someone to start from scratch? Number four, could you share examples of your own successful sites or others you know of so I could study for inspiration and learning?

I appreciate your advice. Uh, any advice you can offer as I take my first steps into this. Alright, so a reasonable question, fairly concise, little background on the person, their experience, how they found my stuff. And they paid a compliment where they say, Hey, it’s clear you have experience and I would like your insight.

So the questions were fairly clear as well, uh, didn’t ramble on. And the thing is like sometimes people send emails and there’s too much information. And they get lost in, in too much. So I like the brevity. They got to the point and they asked some questions, and if you have questions, like I said, shoot me an email.

There’s actually a way to submit a voicemail and it’s in, there’s a phone number in the, the show notes there. It’s good if you kind of rehearse and practice and, and maybe write it down. I wanna say the ideal length of a question is probably about 60. To 90 seconds, one to two minutes or so. The voicemail, it’s a Google Voice number, so it’ll cut off after I, I don’t know how long, so don’t go too long.

But you can actually submit a question, preferably not about niche sites. ’cause Well, you’re gonna hear the answer now. Number one, are you still earning from niche sites? The answer is no. I had one that was still earning maybe like 50 bucks a month or so, and that was as of this year, 2025 sometime, I can’t remember, probably during the summer timeframe.

I remember it being warm outside. The hosting and the domain name were up for renewal, and at one point the site was getting a decent amount of traffic and earning maybe $800 a month. Say in 2022, and it, um, had fairly like expensive hosting and I was paying like, in a three year block and it would’ve been, you know, hundreds of dollars.

So with hosting, with the WordPress theme I was using with domain cost, and I think I was getting a. Dedicated IP address. Anyway, it was a few hundred dollars that I was gonna have to pay and I was like, you know what, this is not working anymore. So I actually like let the domain, um, or kept the domain, but I let the hosting go so the site is gone.

So I was earning money up until earlier this year, a pretty small amount, and nothing close to what it was back in the day. And the second part of the question. Is, do you believe there’s still a good opportunity to start win today? The answer is no. I don’t think it’s a good opportunity. I think if you were thinking, Hey, I’m gonna start a website to start blogging and earn money from affiliate marketing with Amazon Associates, I think that would be a huge waste of time and you should probably spend your time elsewhere.

There’s. Perhaps some argument because there are some people that are still earning money, and usually I hear from people that had sites that were, let’s say they were earning $9,000 a month, through various algorithm updates and different changes in the industry overall, maybe their traffic dropped by.

90% and now they’re only getting, um, or they’re only earning like $900 a month instead of $9,000 per month. So $900 per month. That’s great. That’s cool, right? I mean, that’s not, um, like if I was still earning $900 a month, I would’ve kept the site going that I let go. But if you were starting from scratch right now.

I don’t think it’s a good opportunity. Couple caveats. I’m not out there trying to find success stories these days because it, again, it doesn’t seem like a viable route with the advancement of the AI tools and the writing that. And content that can be produced. I guess content is a better way to put it.

The content that can be produced for websites is fairly high quality as far as how it’s written. It’s come a really long way in, you know. Five years when you look back at, uh, Jasper AI kind of a piece of shit when you look at the actual content that was produced versus what you can get now. And it was very, you know, in 2020, very advanced at the time and people were like, oh, I’m using it for this or that, or it helps me get some ideas and get started.

But. Now, you know, the tools that you can use for 20 bucks a month or, or free in some capacity, like it’s producing really good content. So I would not recommend that you start a website. And the caveat, so I’m not looking for these success stories now, however, there might be people that are out there saying, Hey, I’m, I’m building a site in a.

And I’m able to rank and some people are going and they’re, you know, they’re going clicking through to my site. They’re actually making some purchases or maybe, and I’ve heard people talk about this, so, but, but I haven’t asked them or pursued it or anything like that. So people might be going out there and they are building a site so that they could hopefully have, um, the AI tools.

Chat, GPT, Gemini, uh, Claude, they could have the tools pick up the information from their website, and then they are ranking. I do know of some people that are, they built their site and they actually are ranking, or not ranking, but their information is showing up. In AI tools and they’re getting traffic that way.

And I know it’s been a while, but I did do some interviews where people will go, they’ll create their GPTs that people can go directly to those, or use A GPT that is orient oriented towards like niche sites. I think I even created one and I was like, Hey. You know, this is an expert in niche sites and here’s some other background information.

And then I, I mean, maybe that’s how this person found me, like through, through my GPT. Um, so you might be able to do that. It’s such a moving target and to me it’s not clear what the monetization is, right? So this person came to me to ask questions. They didn’t pay me any money. Um, if I, like, if it was a. A funnel where I was like trying to do services and do coaching and give advice, then maybe that makes sense.

Or if you have an an SEO agency and you answer a bunch of SEO questions, uh, that help small businesses, and then you get them on your email list somehow or another, then. Maybe you’re able to upsell, not upsell, but maybe you’re able to sell to them, and then you have a clear funnel. So that could be a route and you could apply that idea elsewhere.

So it’s audience acquisition in some capacity. You have to figure out how to monetize it most. Again, moving target. So I would say it’s probably a little tough. You’d have to experiment. There’s people out there doing this, right? So you should go find them and follow them. So that said, if you wanna, you know, not worry about the money portion, blogging is a, it’s a valid endeavor.

Content creation, um, whether it’s podcasting or YouTube or writing a blog, pick your medium if you wanna do it as a hobby, which I know you’re not asking as a hobby. This is a, uh, you’re looking at this as a business then hobby. Valid. Right. If you wanna share your information, that’s cool. There’s no issue with that.

I’ve been looking at like guitar stuff. So I was trying to do research on pickup height for hum buckers and the pole pieces. And if you play guitar, you can know what I’m talking about. So you could essentially like adjust and tweak your guitar where the, the magnetic pickups. Sit under the strings, you can raise or lower them, and it impacts the, the, uh, the sound and the output and it’s, you know, something that you have to, you know, test.

And I was trying to find like more information. Of course, there’s a ton of videos on YouTube, but there’s only so much you can get from YouTube and people put videos together the best way they can, and sometimes it’s not as helpful. As you know, reading. The information from a website where someone actually like went through and they have like data and information.

So if you are sharing information like that and, and in this case, right, if someone put together a great blog post about pickup height. And the adjustments they made and you know, maybe they, they did um, sound samples and you could see the wave forms and you could see the actual frequency impact of the adjustments and all that kind of stuff.

They could refer someone to. Specific pickups and say, Hey, I tested these, the height, I set it up like this and here’s the strings I used and blah, blah, blah. So if there’s like a great deal of information that would be great to put on a website. Now that said, you know, the GPTs are gonna snag the information.

Side note, as we go on tangents here, I did look at the uh, Google AI overview answer, and in one case it said the. The neck pickup height should be X and the bridge pickup height should be Y. And then I Googled something slightly different. The AI overview had them transposed, so it was neck height should be Y, and the bridge height should be X.

And I was like, that’s, I was like, did I read this wrong? I was like, what the fuck? So it’s not accurate. And that’s the thing with the AI overview. So. I’m not an expert, but I dig into the weeds on topics that I’m very interested in, whether it’s home brewing beer, and you know, details of like mash temperature and enzymes and different things like that, or the pickup height of a guitar.

These are in the fucking weeds, right? Like this is pretty. Detailed information, and I know enough to dig in though I’m not an expert and I don’t have data to back up a lot of the stuff and ideas that I do know, but the point being, if you’re somewhat, uh, intermediate to advanced in your knowledge area, when you start looking at the AI overviews, I mean, those are from Reddit.

If you don’t know how I feel about Reddit. A lot of morons out there, a lot of mean people, people talking about things that they heard from someone else. I mean, you don’t know where the information’s coming from. So the second, uh, Google query that I put in where the information was transposed, someone could have just fucked it up when they were writing a Reddit post or in a forum or whatever.

So that’s the issue. And there’s like no sanity check. So one query gave. One set of information, other query gave like the fucking opposite, so basically useless. Um, all that to say, uh, blogging could be okay if you’re not worrying about making money. Alright, let’s get to question two. I thought this was gonna be fast.

It’s all my fault. Alright, this one is fast. I noticed some of the templates and resources on your website aren’t downloadable. Am I missing something or is Access limited? I don’t know. Probably you should sign up for the email list. Occasionally the email form disappears when there’s some, I don’t know, uh, it’s like kit and then my WordPress theme and then plugins.

So occasionally the little form disappears and then I have to update the WordPress plugin or whatever kind of connection is over there. Uh, the overall point is. You should be able to get the downloads if you sign up for the email list. That said, if anything is related to a niche website, as far as like SEO or ranking or whatever, probably not useful anymore.

Again, don’t waste your time on websites. If you disagree out there, by the way, like say, oh yeah, websites are great, but I could tell by the viewership. And mainly on the YouTube side, that people are not trying to build websites, they’re trying to build apps and other stuff like that. If you do have a website and you want to, um, like switch over to maybe cheaper hosting, I will refer my hosting company that I use.

I, I’ll give you two options. One is MDD, and that’s where I host the majority of my stuff now. So MDD. Was referred to me by a, a friend long time ago, and I’ve been on MDD for I think over a decade at this point. And small shop, I believe they’re US based and it’s just, uh, probably a couple, few people. I haven’t done a specific research, but what I’ve emailed before for just normal support questions, it’s like the founder, I think MDD is like the person’s initial, so the.

The founder is, you know, running a hosting company. Never had, um, like, uh, take that back. I’ve had one sort of outage. They had one outage over 10 years and it was, uh, multiple redundant systems failed in a weird way. And my site was down for like a couple days. This was six years ago. And because of the issue, they changed some things and added.

More redundancy. So anyway, MDD, if you want like a mom and pop small shop, US based, um, you can check that out. I’m a, an affiliate for them. The other is, uh, cloud ways part of the digital Ocean, uh, brand of companies. And they are, I believe they are, there’s a lot of folks. Overseas based. No issue with that at all.

Uh, just different kind of service and that sort of thing. So you can have a look at either one. Check out the prices, but the reason why I’m bringing this up, often if you’re on the same hosting company for a long time, prices go up. You’re no longer on like the sort of promo. Um, deal. So if you switch over to a new company, sometimes you can get a better deal.

Maybe you could step down your service. And that’s what I did because I, I realized, oh, niche side project is not getting nearly as much traffic. My other websites, they weren’t getting as much traffic, so I stepped down to cheaper hosting to cut cost because that’s what the business has dictated. So. Next.

Number three, what tools or platforms would you suggest? So if you are starting a website, which again, don’t recommend, I would say you can go to MDD, you can go to um, cloud Ways. There’s whatever hosting company, it’s a commodity. You could find one and it’ll probably be fine. Most people are using WordPress still.

I am, although I don’t love the complexity, and I’m still paying, I think, a hundred dollars a year for a WordPress name that I’ve been using for a while, and there’s potential that I would move to like one of the free, just WordPress, uh, whatever, 20, 25 or whatever, and just use a free theme. You can probably use other platforms.

I know when I was slightly paying a little more attention to some of the content site and niche site community, I know that some people were moving away from WordPress because it wasn’t serving. It was like a little bloated, and I mean, it’s more complicated than it needs to be. So I would say. You could potentially select something that’s a little bit different.

The big thing with WordPress is there’s so many plugins and there’s such a, a rich and vast amount of third party plugins and extendability that you could probably do whatever you need to do Using WordPress, it is slightly more complicated and. I would say just messy than it needs to be for a lot of people, but it works fine.

And last one, could you share examples of my own sites or sites that you know for inspiration and learning? So I would say go back through my archive, if you wanna check out some of the old sites. All that stuff was in the past, none of this shit would work anymore. Like if you, if you followed along and, and did what was prescribed from, I mean, some of the success interviews started like 20 14, 20 15, something like that.

If you tried to do that stuff now, it would not really work. There’s some, you know, there’s some things. That are more like universally applicable at this point in time and they had some longevity. But in general, I would say not a very good use of time. One thing I, I would advise, um, or at least I would suggest you take a look, so I’ve interviewed a friend.

Named Cody Berman. He should be coming back on the show with me. I was able to hang out with him briefly in Portland, in, uh, at the FinCon conference. And although we did, we passed each other several times, saw each other in the gym, but we didn’t get to chat too much. But he’s been on the show a few times.

It’s Cody created digital downloadables and he sells them on Etsy, so big marketplace. And he has been able to earn, I, I think he did a sprint where he was like, I’m gonna.

Earn a thousand dollars per month as soon as possible. And then he like documented it all and he has a course out there and I’m an affiliate for that. So digital downloadables are great. The other, um, sort of adjacent is the print on demand. So I interviewed, uh, another friend. I talked to her a few times.

She’s been on the show twice. Should probably get an update from her as well. She does a similar idea of downloadables, but they are print on demand. Um, so I think like t-shirts, um, mugs, any sort of thing that you could, you know, print on stickers. And she has earned, I wanna say she earned like 500 K within two years.

On Etsy as well. So it’s still sort of like digital graphic design related. And she didn’t have a background in that, by the way. She came out of the education industry. So she didn’t have like graphic design or Canva experience or anything like that. And she also has a course, so again, they’re similar in that you create like digital graphics.

One is. You know, delivered, like Cody’s version is sort of like delivered and then you print it out. I think you might have some capacity to like print it and have, have it sent, but that’s kind of beside the point. And then Emily’s is more like a giftable situation. So those are valid. You’re like creating something, you’re using your, your knowledge of.

Perhaps a specific niche or industry. And Emily covers and, and Cody as well, in each of their respective courses, they, they teach you how to find, you know, the, the hidden gems, the underserved communities, which is essentially keyword research when it comes down to it. So if you have skills from like SEO doing keyword research, it’s a pretty.

Straightforward, like transfer, like you’re probably, you’re probably too advanced if you know some really advanced SEO and keyword research. So those are valid routes. Both of ’em were able to ramp up and get started pretty quickly. And Cody, he, um, yeah, he’s really crushed it over the years with his. Um, you know, digital downloadable course, and he has so many success stories, and I wanna say like some of his former students have been featured on like CNBC and some other areas, uh, or, or other outlets where they just covered, like someone who started on the side and ended ma ended up making like, you know, multiple six figures per year.

So there’s stuff out there going on, and then I know there’s people that create. They create apps, they’re using, um, AI to help them code, and they’re creating their own app to help solve their problem. And then probably the, the quickest and smartest route is to like, I’m not doing this, but like to create something, get some users, and then sell it because.

If you’re not a software person, and I ranted on this a few weeks ago, if you’re not a software person, you could create an app and then you have to figure out how to maintain it and do customer service and do marketing and some other stuff like that. So great things to learn, but if you don’t have a background on it, then you’re probably gonna be in a situation where you’re gonna need to add.

People to your team to make it, you know, make it a good tool and make it a tool that people will use and it’ll improve and grow and become a better tool versus a tool that, you know, you end up with bugs because let’s say it’s a WordPress plugin, for example, and then there’s a WordPress update and you have to like constantly like keep up.

With any updates with other software that you’re interfacing with. So it can get complicated fairly fast. And if you don’t have experience, then it could be, it could be tough. I’ll, I’ll just put it that way. It could be pretty tough. Alright, so we hit, you know, 30 minutes, so maybe I’ll just, I’ll finish the episode here.

I promised you a second half. As we do, I, I talk too long. I said we, but it’s just me talking too long. I made the call to action a couple times. Send me some questions. We could do mailbag. You can leave a voicemail if you want to. Other call to action if you need to switch hosting. If you were thinking of switching, hosting, I’ll put links.

I’ll give you the two options. Uh, MDD and cloud ways. I’m an affiliate for both. If you do switch and you pay them either some money, then I might earn a commission, depending on, uh, there’s some criteria, but it helps support the show, which I appreciate. I hope that was helpful, possibly entertaining, and I hope to, uh, hang out with you next week.